High-throughput experimental methods are widely used today to identify genes and proteins involved in a particular process, but not all molecules in a pathway can be identified in this manner. To...
Jul, 01, 2009
The complexity and variability of aging itself, along with the fragmented nature of researchers’ current understanding of aging, call for tools that can help scientists dig through mounds of data to find often subtle connections.
Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France rode a bicycle until she was 100 years old. When she gave up smoking at age 117, her doctor suspected it was out of pride. (She couldn’t see well enough...
Apr, 01, 2008
A virtual lab rat; simulated DNA; an artificial pancreas; & integrating mental health data
Several biomedical computing projects received multi-million dollar funding in the fall of 2011, including efforts to: simulate the cardiac physiology of the rat; build a state-of-the-art DNA...
Jan, 02, 2012
Researchers have designed a protein that, in computer simulations, induces other proteins to misfold
Inside a live cell, strings of amino acids instantaneously fold into proteins with very specific shapes. Typically, no harm is done if a protein somehow folds into an unconventional configuration....
Sep, 01, 2005
Supercomputers open up new horizons, offering the possibility of discovering new ways to understand life’s complexity
Their very names sound like dinosaurs. Teracomputers. Petacomputers. These are, in fact, the dinosaurs of the digital world—monstrous, hungry and powerful. But unlike the extinct...
Oct, 01, 2006
Simulations can teach us how young bodies and faces develop; how an artery compensates for decades of fatty plaque deposits by growing and thickening its walls; how tissue engineers can best coax endothelial cells to develop into organized sheets of skin for burn patients; and how cancerous tumors invade neighboring tissue.
For better or for worse, and on many levels, our tissues never stop growing and changing. While developing from childhood to old age, we grow not only bone, cartilage, fat, muscle and skin, but also...
Apr, 01, 2008
On the computer screen, vessels throb realistically with each pump of the heart while the river of blood swirls and pools at curves and intersections. This is a simulation built with SimVascular...
Apr, 01, 2007
The Millisecond is Attained!
Scientists have now simulated protein folding at a timescale that begins to be relevant to biology: the millisecond. Indeed, the simulation busted through the millisecond time barrier to tackle the...
Apr, 01, 2010
The National Cancer Institute launched the Integrative Cancer Biology Program (ICBP) in October 2004, providing a total of $15 million to nine multidisciplinary centers. The goal: to use predictive...
Jun, 01, 2005